Mona Shores Public Schools Launches New Website: Dynamic Content Improves Learning, Teaching and Communication

Grand Rapids, MI, January 26, 2007 --(PR.com)-- Muskegon County’s school districts are focused on educating young people and preparing them for success beyond high school. In this respect, Mona Shores Public Schools is no different from others. But a look at their new website, www.monashores.net, shows how seriously they take the role of technology in achieving their mission. “Our goal,” says Superintendent Terry Babbitt, “is to be a high-performance learning organization. In order to do that, we have to have the right tools, and our website is an important one.” The new site is powered by a content management system (CMS) designed by Foxbright, a West-Michigan technology company with strong ties to Muskegon County. Using the Foxbright CMS, teachers, administrators and others can quickly and easily change website content in their areas of responsibility, while maintaining the website’s professional look.

Mona Shores Public Schools faced a dilemma familiar to districts across the country: how to provide fresh, relevant content to the many different users of the website. With over 4,000 students spread among four elementary schools, a middle school and a high school, the district’s activities affect many thousands of people every day. Add to this the fact that the Internet is increasingly where people turn to for information about their school, and the need for a dynamic website was plain. “We are in a different era now. Our students get a great deal of the information they consume from the web. We needed a website that would be more useful to them, their parents, and the teachers and other professionals in the district,” says Babbitt.

“Before we partnered with Foxbright, our website was home grown, and that showed,” says Lane White, Directory of Technology for Mona Shores. “It was content rich, but as with any static site, changes had to be made by hand, by a person who is trained on a specific type of software.” The ideal solution is to enable those who need a change on a web page to be able to make the change.

One of the other benefits the district has realized from working with Foxbright is a consistent look and feel to the website. A significant drawback to letting many people add content to a website is the effect it has on a graphical identity. Communication is about more than words, especially on the web. “Users expect consistent layout and navigation page to page,” says White. “With the Foxbright CMS, our people can update content without violating the overall operations of the website.”

“We are very proud to be associated with Mona Shores Public Schools,” says Rob Huisingh, Foxbright’s VP of Sales and Marketing. “Our mission is to help public schools leverage websites as a communication vehicle because an informed community is a supportive community.”

The future holds more enhancements for the site. “In the second phase of the roll out, teachers will be given access to the CMS so they can update their own pages much faster that ever before. We’re piloting a blog of teachers, and there still more ways the website can become a more powerful piece of educational technology,” says White.

A school district’s website creates an impression of the overall community, especially among families considering a move to the area. Mona Shores Public School’s new website reflects the community’s commitment to quality in education. “Our community has always been supportive of the role of technology in education, and that’s because we’ve demonstrated positive results. Our new website will do what a school website should: help students learn, help teachers teach, and help parents communicate quickly and easily with us,” says Babbitt.

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